by Tom Sharpe
'I must say I find it hard to believe,' said the Superintendent. 'A more inoffensive little man you couldn't wish to meet.'
'I could,' said Flint with feeling.
'But he had to be drugged up to the eyeballs before we could get him to go back in,' said the Major.
'Drugged? What with?' said the psychologist.
'No idea. Some concoction our medic brews up for blighters with a streak of yellow. Works wonders with the bomb-disposal chappies.'
Well it wouldn't appear to have worked quite so well in this case,' said the psychologist nervously, 'but it certainly accounts for the remarkable readings we've been getting. We could well have a case of chemically induced schizophrenia on our hands.'
'I wouldn't bother too much about the "chemically induced" if I were you,' said Flint. 'Wilt's a nutter anyway. I'll give a hundred to one he set this thing up from the start.'
'You can't seriously be suggesting that Mr Wilt deliberately went out of his way to put his own children in the hands of a bunch of international terrorists,' said the Superintendent. 'When I discussed the matter with him he seemed genuinely astonished and disturbed.'
'What Wilt seems and what Wilt is are two entirely separate things. I can tell you this much though. Any man who can dress an inflatable doll up in his wife's clothes and ditch the thing at the bottom of a pile hole under thirty tons of quick-set concrete isn't '
'Excuse me, sir,' interrupted the sergeant, 'message just come through from the station that Mrs Wilt has flown the coop.'
The four men looked at him in despair 'She's what?' said the Superintendent. 'Escaped from custody, sir. Nobody seems to know where she is.'
'It fits,' said Flint, 'it fits and no mistake.'
'Fits? What fits for Chrissake?' asked the Superintendent, who was beginning to feel distinctly peculiar himself.
'The pattern, sir. Next thing we'll hear is that she was last seen on a motor cruiser going down the river, only she won't be.'
The Superintendent stared at him dementedly. 'And you call that a pattern? Oh, my God.'
'Well, it's the sort of thing Wilt would come up with, believe me. That little bugger can think up more ways of taking a perfectly sane and sensible situation and turning it into a raving nightmare than any villain I've ever met.'
'But there's got to be some motive for his actions.'
Flint laughed abruptly. 'Motive? With Henry Wilt? Not on your life. You can think of a thousand good motives, ten thousand if you like, for what he does but at the end of the day he'll come up with the one explanation you never even dreamt of. Wilt's the nearest thing to Ernie you could wish to meet.'
'Ernie?' said the Superintendent. 'Who the hell is Ernie?
'That ruddy computer they use for the premium bonds, sir. You know, the one that picks numbers out at random. Well, Wilt's a random man, if you know what I mean.'
'I don't think I want to,' said the Superintendent. 'I thought all I had to cope with was a nice simple ordinary siege, instead of which this thing is developing into a madhouse.'
'While we're on that subject,' said the psychologist, 'I really do think it's very important to resume communications with the people in the top flat. Whoever is up there and holding the Schautz woman is in a highly disturbed state. She could be in grave danger.'
'No "could" about it,' said Flint. 'Is.'
'All right. I suppose we'll have to risk it,' said the Superintendent. 'Give the go-ahead for the helicopter to move in with a field telephone, sergeant.'
'Any orders regarding Mrs Wilt, sir?'
'You'd better ask the Inspector here. He seems to be the expert on the Wilt family. What sort of woman is Mrs Wilt? And don't say she's a random one.'
'I wouldn't really like to say,' said Flint, 'except that she's a very powerful woman.'
'What do you think she plans to do then? She obviously didn't leave the police station without some aim in mind.'
'Well, knowing Wilt as well as I do, sir, I have to admit I've grave doubts about her having a mind at all. Any normal woman would have been in a nut-house years ago living with a man like that.'
'You're not suggesting she's some sort of psychopath as well?'
'No, sir,' said Flint, 'all I'm saying is that she can't have any nerves worth speaking about.'
'That's a big help. So we've got a bunch of terrorists armed to the teeth, some sort of nutter in the shape of Wilt and a woman on the loose with a hide like a rhino. Put that little lot together and we've got ourselves one hell of a combination. All right, sergeant, put out an alert for Mrs Wilt and see that they take her into custody before anyone else gets hurt.'
The Superintendent crossed to the window and looked at the Wilts' house. Under the glare of the floodlights it stood out against the night sky like a monument erected to commemorate the stolidity and unswerving devotion to boredom of English middle-class life. Even the Major was moved to comment.
'Sort of suburban son-et-lumière, what? he murmured.
'Lumière perhaps,' said the Superintendent, 'but at least we're spared the son.'
But not for long. From somewhere seemingly close at hand there came a series of terrible wails. The Wilt quads were giving tongue.
Chapter 16
A mile away Eva Wilt moved towards her home with a fixed resolve that was wholly at variance with her appearance. The few people who noticed her as she bustled down narrow streets saw only an ordinary housewife in a hurry to fix her husband's supper and put the children to bed. But beneath her homely look Eva Wilt had changed. She had shed her cheerful silliness and her borrowed opinions and had only one thought in mind. She was going home and no one was going to stop her. What she would do when she got there she had no idea, and in a vague way she was aware that home was not simply a place. It was also what she was, the wife of Henry Wilt and mother of the quads, a working woman descended from a line of working women who had scrubbed floors, cooked meals and held families together in spite of illnesses and deaths and the vagaries of men. It wasn't a clearly defined thought but it was there driving her forward almost by instinct. But with instinct there came thought.
They would be waiting for her in Farringdon Avenue so she would avoid it. Instead of she would cross the river by the iron footbridge and go round by Barnaby Road and then across the fields where she had taken the children blackberrying only two months ago and enter the garden at the back. And then? She would have to wait and see. If there was any way of entering the house and joining the children she would take it. And if the terrorists killed her it was better than losing the quads. The main thing was that she would be there to protect them. Beneath this uncertain logic there was rage. Like her thoughts it was vague and diffuse and focused as much on the police as on the terrorists. If anything she blamed the police more. To her the terrorists were criminals and murderers and the police were there to save the public from such people. That was their job, and they hadn't done it properly. Instead they had allowed her children to be taken hostage and were now playing a sort of game in which the quads were merely pieces. It was a simple view but Eva's mind saw things simply and straightforwardly. Well, if the police wouldn't act she would.
It was only when she reached the footbridge over the river that she saw the full magnitude of the problem facing her. Half a mile away the house in Willington Road stood in an aura of white light. Around it the street lamps glimmered dimly and the other houses were black shadows. For a moment she paused, gripping the handrail and wondering what to do, but there was no point in hesitating. She had to go on. She went down the iron steps and along Barnaby Road until she came to the footpath across the field. She went through and followed it until she reached the muddy patch by the next gate. A group of bullocks stirred in the darkness near her but Eva had no fear of cattle. They were part of the natural world to which she felt she properly belonged.
But on the far side of the gate everything was unnatural. Against the sinister white glare of the floodlights she could see men with guns and
when she had climbed the gate she stooped down and spotted the coils of barbed wire. They ran right across the field from Farringdon Avenue. Willington Road had been sealed off. Again instinct provoked cunning. There was a ditch to her left and if she made her way along it...But there would be a man there to stop her. She needed something to divert his attention. The bullocks would do. Eva opened the gate and then trudging through the mud shooed the beasts into the next field before closing the gate again. She shooed them still further and the bullocks scattered and were presently moving slowly forward in their usual inquisitive way. Eva scrambled down into the ditch and began to wade along it. It was a muddy ditch, half filled with water and as she went weeds gathered around her knees and the occasional bramble scratched her face. Twice she put her hand into clumps of stinging-nettles but Eva hardly felt them. Her mind was too occupied with other problems. Mainly the lights. They glared at the house with a brilliance that made it seem unreal and almost like looking at a photographic negative where all the tones were reversed and windows which should have shone with light were black squares against a lighter background. And all the time from somewhere across the field there came the incessant beat of an engine. Eva peered over the edge of the ditch and made out the dark shape of a generator. She knew what it was because John Nye had once explained how electricity was made when he had been trying to persuade her to install a Savonius rotor which ran off windpower. So that was how they were lighting the house. Not that it helped her. The generator was out in the middle of the field and she couldn't possibly reach it. Anyway, the bullocks were proving a useful distraction. They had gathered in a group round one of the armed men and he was trying to get rid of them. Eva went back into the ditch and stumbling along came to the barbed wire.
As she had expected it coiled down into the water and it was only by reaching down the full length of her arm that she could find the bottom strand. She pulled it up and then stooping down so that she was almost submerged managed to wriggle her way underneath By the time she reached the hedge that ran along the backs of all the gardens she was soaked to the skin and her hands and legs were covered with mud, but the cold didn't affect her. Nothing mattered except the fear that she would be stopped before she reached the house. And there were bound to be more armed men in the garden.
Eva stood knee-deep in the mud and waited and watched. Noises came to her out of the night. There was certainly someone in Mrs Haslop's garden. The smell of cigarette smoke told her so, but her main attention was fixed on her own back garden and the lights that blazed her home into a fearful isolation. A man moved from the back of the summerhouse and crossed to the gate into the field. Eva watched him stroll away towards the generator. And still she waited with the cunning that sprang from some deep instinct. Another man moved behind the summerhouse, a match flared in the darkness as he lit a cigarette, and Eva, like some primeval amphibian, climbed slowly from the ditch and on her hands and knees crawled forward along the hedge. All the time her eyes were fixed on the glowing tip of the cigarette. By the time she reached the gate she could see the man's face each time he took a deep puff, and the gate was open. It swung slightly in the breeze, never quite shutting. Eva began to crawl through it when her knee touched something cylindrical and slippery. She felt down with a hand and found a thick plastic-coated cable. It ran through the gateway to the three floodlights stationed on the lawn. All she had to do was cut it and the lights would go off. And there were secateurs in the greenhouse. But if she used them she might electrocute herself. Better to take the axe with the long handle and that was by the woodpile on the far side of the summerhouse. If only the man with the cigarette would go she could reach it in no time. But what would make him move? If she threw a stone at the greenhouse he would certainly investigate.
Eva felt around on the path and had just found a piece of flint when the need for throwing it ended. A loud chattering noise was coming from behind her and turning her head she could make out the shape of a helicopter coming low over the field. And the man had moved. He was on his feet and had walked round the summerhouse so that his back was towards her. Eva crawled through the gate, got to her feet and ran for the woodpile. On the other side of the summerhouse the man didn't hear her. The helicopter was nearer now and its rotors drowned her movements Already Eva had the axe and had returned to the cable and as the helicopter passed overhead she swung the axe down. A moment later the house had disappeared and the night had become intensely dark. She stumbled forward, trampled across the herb garden and reached the lawn before she realized that she seemed to be in the middle of a tornado. Above her the helicopter blades thrashed the air, the machine veered sideways, something swung past her head and a moment later there came the sound of breaking glass. Mrs de Frackas' conservatory was being demolished. Eva stopped in her tracks and threw herself flat on the lawn. From inside the house there came the rattle of automatic fire, and bullets riddled the summerhouse. She was in the middle of some awful battle and everything had suddenly gone horribly wrong.
In Mrs de Frackas' conservatory Superintendent Misterson had been watching the helicopter moving in towards the balcony window with the field telephone dangling beneath it, when the world had suddenly vanished. After the brilliance of the floodlights he could see nothing but he could still feel and hear and before he could grope his way back into the drawing-room he both felt and heard. He certainly felt the field telephone on the side of his head and he vaguely heard the sound of breaking glass. A second later he was on the tiled floor and the whole damned place seemed to be cascading glass, potted geraniums, begonia semperflorens and soilless compost. It was the latter that prevented him from expressing his true feelings.
'You bleeding maniac...' he began before choking in the dust storm. The Superintendent rolled on to his side and tried to avoid the debris but things were still falling from the shelves and Mrs de Frackas' treasured Cathedral Bell plant had detached itself from the wall and had draped him with tendrils. Finally as he tried to fight his way out of this home-grown jungle a large Camellia 'Donation' in a heavy clay pot toppled from its pedestal and put an end to his misery. The head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad lay comfortably unconscious on the tiles and made no comment.
But in the Communications Centre comments flew thick and fast. The Major yelled orders to the helicopter pilot while two operators wearing headphones were clutching their ears and screaming that some fucking lunatic was bouncing on the parabolic listening devices. Only Flint remained cool and comparatively detached. Ever since he had first learnt that Wilt was involved in the case he had known that something appalling was bound to happen. In Flint's mind the name Wilt spelt chaos, a sort of cosmic doom against which there was no protection, except possibly prayer, and now that catastrophe had struck he was secretly pleased. It proved his premonition right and the Superintendent's optimism entirely wrong. And so while the Major ordered the helicopter pilot to get the hell out, Flint picked his way through the rubble in the conservatory and disentangled his unconscious superior from the foliage.
'Better call an ambulance,' he told the Major as he dragged the injured man into the Communications Centre, 'the Super looks as if he's bought it.'
The Major was too busy to be concerned. 'That's your business. Inspector,' he said. 'I've got to see those swine don't get away.'
'Sounds as though they're still in the house,' said Flint as the sporadic firing continued from Number 9, but the Major shook his head.
'Doubt it. Could have left a suicide squad to cover their retreat, or rigged up a machine gun with a timing device to fire at intervals. Can't trust the buggers an inch.'
Flint radioed for medical help and ordered two constables to carry the Superintendent through the neighbouring gardens to Farringdon Avenue, a process that was impeded by the SGS men searching for escaping terrorists. It was half an hour before silence descended on Willington Road and the listening devices had confirmed that there was still human presence in the house.
There was also ap
parently something vertebrate lying on the Wilts' lawn. Flint, returning from the ambulance, found the Major grasping a revolver and preparing to make a sortie.
'Got one of the bastards by the sound of things,' he said as a massive heartbeat issued from an amplifier linked to a listening device. 'Going out to bring him in. Probably wounded in the cross-fire.'
He dashed out into the darkness and a few minutes later there was a yell, the sound of a violent struggle involving an extremely vigorous object and sections of the fence between the two gardens. Flint switched the amplifier off. Now that the massive heartbeat had gone there were other even more disturbing sounds coming from the machine. But what was finally dragged through the shattered conservatory was worst of all. Never the most attractive of women in Flint's eyes, Eva Wilt daubed in mud, weeds and soaked to the skin which showed through her torn dress in several places, now presented a positively prehistoric appearance. She was still struggling as the six SGS men bundled her into the room. The Major followed with a black eye.
'Well at least we've got one of the swine, 'he said.
'I'm not one of the swine,' shouted Eva, 'I'm Mrs Wilt. You've no right to treat me like this.'
Inspector Flint retreated behind a chair. 'It's certainly Mrs Wilt,' he said. 'Mind telling us what you were trying to do?'
Front the carpet Eva regarded him with loathing.
'I was trying to join my children. I've got a right to.'
'I've heard that one before,' said Flint. 'You and your rights. I suppose Henry put you up to this?'
'He did nothing of the sort. I don't even know what's happened to him. For all I know he's dead.' And she promptly burst into tears.
'All right, you can let her go now, chaps,' said the Major at last convinced that his captive was not one of the terrorists. 'You could have got yourself killed, you know.'
Eva ignored him and got to her feet. 'Inspector Flint, you're a father yourself. You must know what it means to be separated from your loved ones in their hour of need.'